by Mary Balogh
“Of course, my dear,” he said, indicating the comfortable-looking leather chair on the opposite side of the fireplace from his. He waited for her to seat herself before resuming his own place.
At first she was self-conscious and read and reread the same paragraph without comprehending a single word. But after a while she looked up with a slight start, wondering for how long she had been absorbed in her book. He was reclined in his chair, looking very comfortable, clearly absorbed in his own reading. They sat, silently reading, for a few hours before he put his book down and suggested that she ring for the tea tray.
It had been a strangely seductive evening. They had not spoken, and yet his very presence had relaxed her and enabled her to enjoy one of her favorite pastimes.
“It is getting late,” he said and half smiled.
She glanced at the clock on the mantel. They would drink their tea, and it would be time for bed. Within the next hour … She felt the now familiar aching sensation in her womb and between her thighs.
“I am sorry,” she said, getting to her feet. “I have been neglecting my duty.” But his words had not been scolding, and her answer had not been apologetic.
Sometimes she wondered why they were not completely happy. She would look back on her life with the Burnabys and shudder inwardly. She would picture life alone and free and independent at Sindon Park—she knew he would not try to stop her from going there if she decided to do so—and felt a bleak chill.
By her own request their marriage had continued to be a real marriage. She was proving both to her husband and to herself that she was capable of being his duchess. They communicated. She knew that she pleased him in bed. He pleased her there too. It was too soon to know whether she had conceived during this first month of their marriage—she had had her monthly period only just before her wedding and did not know yet if the next one would happen. But he had come to her each night except the second. She loved perhaps best of all, although it came at the end of what she never wanted to end, the heat of his seed passing deep inside from him into her.
Yet there was in both of them at the end of their first month together a sense of waiting—a sense of a decision yet to be made. It was strange, perhaps. They were married. The decision had been made. She was his property, to do with as he wished. She had vowed obedience and would not break her vow. But she knew that there was a decision to be made and that he would allow her to make it and would live by whatever she decided.
She was perhaps unique among women.
She was married, yet she was free.
She did not have that freedom by right. He had given it to her.
It was a thought that made her angry at first. Why could women not be free as men were free? Why did they have no right to freedom?
But it was also a thought that began to dominate her thinking, that began to haunt her night and day. He had her in his possession. All the forces of law and religion—as well as his superior masculine strength—were behind him to back up his claims. No one—no one—would ever blame him for holding on to her for the rest of their lives and forcing her into submission to his will. Yet he had given her her freedom. He had exposed himself to the possibility of censure and ridicule—he would receive both in plenty if he allowed her to leave him—and given her freedom.
He had treated her during that journey to Hampshire with contempt veiled in courtesy. He had been no different from anyone else she had seen while dressed in those clothes. He had judged by appearances and had dismissed everything she had said, everything she was, with an amused cynicism. He had been quite prepared to amuse himself with her during their nights on the road and to set her up in some love nest for his future pleasure.
Her shock at being so dismissed as a person deserving a hearing, deserving some respect, was still deep.
But he had helped her. And he had been courteous. And he had not tried to force himself upon her once she had uttered that one word—no. And finally, when he had fallen into his own trap, he had taken the consequences with his characteristic courtesy and sense of honor.
And now he was still giving her the choice of saying no. No to whatever he wished to do to her or with her. No to being his wife in anything but name. No to living with him.
And even when they were still at Sindon Park, he had insisted that the marriage contract state that her inheritance remain independently hers.
Sometimes it seemed foolish and childish—and even downright insane—to refuse to forgive him.
Sometimes when his body was joined with hers in her bed, she would hold him with tenderness and try to persuade herself that it was merely with pleasure and that it was a pleasure she took for herself without regard to the pleasure he might be taking too.
But it was tenderness.
She was not sure that she could allow herself to feel tenderness for him. She was not sure she could respect herself if she did. But it was something she had to work out for herself.
It was a lonely feeling. Freedom is a lonely thing, she thought with some surprise.
THE SUMMER FÊTE had never been his favorite day of the year even though he had always made it a point to be at Wightwick for the occasion. He had always felt it important to watch his people celebrating, to stroll among them, talking with them, encouraging the participants in the various contests, congratulating the winners, commiserating with the losers, eating with them. Even dancing with them. His mother, of course, had done all the organizing and had busied herself throughout the day, going from the village to the park, making sure that she was always available to judge the contests in baking and needlework and to hand out the prizes in all the races and other competitions. It was something she had done with grace and apparent ease and with perfect, unruffled dignity.
This year was to be different. He knew it almost before he had swallowed the first mouthful of an early breakfast. Fortunately, he had seen from the window of his bedchamber, the day promised to be sunny and warm, a luxury this year. Stephanie came hurrying into the breakfast room, smiled quickly at him, smiled more dazzlingly at the footman beside the sideboard, and asked him if he would please bring her two eggs and two rounds of toast. Oh, and some coffee, please, James.
She always smiled at their servants. She always said please and thank you. She always sounded genuinely grateful for their service. She often asked the servant—by name—about a particular detail of his or her health or of his mother’s health or that particular item he had been looking to purchase. She knew each of their servants personally, he was sure. His mother would be alarmed. He was charmed.
“Alistair,” she said, turning her smile on him, “you are to be captain of one of the cricket teams this afternoon. You did know? I did remember to tell you?”
“No, actually, my dear,” he said. “Are you sure you would not prefer to do it yourself?”
“No.” Her smile was almost a grin. “I have to be busy about other things. I have to make friends of a few women by awarding them prizes for their embroidery and netting and cake-making and so on, and make a few dozen enemies at the same time.”
He had never joined in the cricket match, which was the highlight of the day for many of the men. His mother had not considered that it would be dignified for him to do so.
“Very well, then,” he said. “But if you do decide to play, it must be on my side. A husband’s orders.”
It was the only command he had given since their wedding, even in joke.
“And you must give the prizes in the village this morning,” she said. “Will you, Alistair? It is not fair that I judge the contests and award the prizes. And I am sure the winners will be far prouder of themselves if their prizes are presented by the Duke of Bridgwater himself.”
Good Lord! “Very well, my dear,” he said. “If you wish it.”
“Oh, Alistair.” She leaned across the table toward him, her face eager and animated. “There is to be dancing about the maypole. Why is dancing about a maypole so much more magical than dancing
anywhere else? I used to love it of all things when I was a girl. I remember Mama being doubtful and thinking perhaps it was not quite proper for the vicar’s daughter to join in, but Papa said I might. I would have died if it had not been allowed.”
He had to resist the impulse to lean back slightly. He was dazzled. She was as excited as a girl. She was enjoying this. His mother had never enjoyed it. She had treated it as one more duty that must be perfectly executed.
“Alistair,” Stephanie said, “give me your opinion. Will it be undignified for the Duchess of Bridgwater to dance about the maypole?”
His mother would have an apoplexy. So should he.
“Not unless it is undignified for the Duke of Bridgwater too,” he said. “I intend to dance about it with you, Stephanie. I hope it does not coincide with the cricket match?”
“Oh, no.” She laughed. “There have to be men to dance. It is to be afterward. Before the ox roast. And then the dance. I can scarce wait. I have never danced out of doors during the evening before.”
“There is a breeze to ruffle your coiffure,” he said, “and stones to cut against your slippers, and night chills to raise goose bumps on your arms.”
She laughed. “And stars for candles,” she said.
“Yes.” There was a curious ache about his heart. “And stars for candles, my dear. We will dance beneath the stars. We will waltz beneath the stars. Shall we?”
“Yes.” Her hand came half across the table to him, but she had drawn it back before he could cover it with his own.
“I must fly,” she said, getting to her feet before he could rise to draw her chair back for her. “I promised to be in the village early.”
“Before eight o’clock?” he said.
She laughed. “Is it that early?” she said. “But I still have to change my clothes and have my hair dressed. No respectable lady can accomplish those tasks within half an hour, you know. Will you ride with me, Alistair? Perhaps I will need advice on some of the judging.”
“I am the world’s foremost authority on embroidery,” he said.
She laughed.
“But I will come, of course,” he said.
He would go anywhere in the world she cared to ask him to go—if she would but go there with him.
17
HERE WAS A STRANGE, HAPPY, CAREFREE FEEL TO THE day, even though there was so much to do every minute of it and there should have been so much anxiety that something would go wrong. There was an excitement about the day, a sense of a turning point. Everything since her marriage and her coming to Wightwick had been leading up to this day, Stephanie realized. It was as if there had been a tacit agreement between her and her husband to postpone their personal problems until after the summer fête. To postpone any decision.
Tomorrow loomed like a great empty void in her life. She could not look beyond today. And while she lived today, she did not want to look beyond. It was such a very happy day.
She moved several times during the course of the day between the village and the park and house, sometimes with her husband, sometimes alone. She wanted to be everywhere at once. She wanted to miss nothing. She judged the ladies’ and the children’s contests, then smiled and applauded while her husband presented the prizes. She switched roles with him during the races and complained to him that judging races was very much easier than judging who had baked the best currant cakes.
She even joined in one of the races, when there was an odd number of children wishing to participate in the three-legged race. She partnered a thin, timid little girl, and they narrowly won the race when the leaders-by-a-mile fell in a tangled heap just before the finish line and could not untangle themselves in time. Stephanie hugged her partner, laughing helplessly, and waved cheerfully to the rather large crowd that had suddenly gathered. She threw a half-laughing, half-defiant glance at her husband, and realized that just a month before she would have been horrified by her own behavior and would have been vowing never to behave thus again.
She coaxed her husband into buying her six lengths of gaudy ribbon from a peddler’s stall in the village and then tied them into the newly washed, newly combed hair of the six young daughters of one of the poorer tenants. She drew him toward the tent of a gypsy, whom she suspected was no gypsy at all, insisting that they have their fortunes told. But at the last moment, after he had acquiesced, she changed her mind.
“No,” she said, “not the future. This is today, and it is such an enjoyable day. Let us not find out about the future, even in fun.”
“No,” he agreed. “Let us enjoy today, my dear.”
He too knew that tomorrow all might change.
She watched the cricket game and cheered unashamedly and partially for her husband’s team. He was a talented player, as she soon discovered with interest. His steward, who came to stand beside her for a few minutes, informed her that His Grace had been on the first eleven while at Oxford University. That was one thing about himself he had not told her.
“You should have played at Richmond that day,” she said accusingly when the game was over.
But he merely smiled and drew her arm through his. “When our children reach a suitable age,” he said, “we will scrape together enough children from the neighborhood to make up two teams and we can captain one each.”
“Mine will humiliate yours,” she said.
“Yes, probably,” he agreed pleasantly. “It is humiliating to know that one has completely annihilated another team and made them feel quite inept.”
She looked sidelong at him to find that he was doing the same to her. She did not miss the assumption they had both made about the future. She wondered, as she had done several times during the past week, if she was with child. There was a definite chance, though she was always so irregular that it was impossible to know for sure. It would be foolish to hope yet—or to dread.
Usually after the cricket match, most people relaxed or strolled in the park until it was time for the feast to begin. Only the young people headed back to the village for the maypole dancing. But this year word had somehow spread that the Duke of Bridgwater and his new bride were not only planning to attend the event, but were themselves intending to dance.
No one had ever seen a Duke of Bridgwater or his duchess or any of his family dancing about the maypole. No one could quite imagine it. Everyone needed visual evidence to believe that it could possibly happen. And so late in the afternoon the main street of the village was crowded with people, and the village green was surrounded by a milling, curious, laughing throng.
Stephanie took off her bonnet and her gloves and set them aside with her parasol. There was a smattering of applause, and one brave anonymous soul whistled. Her husband took off his hat and his coat, as he had done for the cricket match, and rolled up his shirt sleeves to the elbows. He eyed the maypole and its many-colored ribbons with some misgiving, Stephanie saw.
But he knew the steps, as he proved as soon as they and the other dancers had all taken a ribbon in hand and the violins began to play. The crowd ringing the green clapped and stamped in time to the music. Only once did the ribbons become snarled and the music pause for a few moments. The crowd jeered good-naturedly. Stephanie smiled as her husband laughed, apologized abjectly, untangled the ribbons, and laughed again.
If she closed her eyes, she thought, as she performed the intricate patterns of the dance, concentrating on both her steps and the movements of her hand with its green ribbon, she could almost imagine herself back in her girlhood, in that golden time before all the harsher realities of life had intruded. She could picture her mother smiling, her father clapping to the rhythm and nodding encouragement to her. She could picture Tom whooping with enthusiasm and catching the nearest pretty girl about the waist when the dancing was finished and twirling her about.
But this was not her girlhood. She turned her head to watch her husband, who was grinning and lifting his arm higher as one of his tenant’s young daughters stepped with her ribbon beneath his and around
him. Stephanie was doing the same thing with the man closest to her. She smiled at the man, and he smiled back—a smile of warmth and admiration and respect.
This was not wrong, she thought. It was not undignified. She was glad she had decided to do things her way, though she would always be grateful for the training her mother-in-law had given her. She was glad she was free. She was glad she had found out in time that she need be no slave to an obligation that could never be repaid.
He might have held her in thrall for the rest of her life. She would never have known. There would have been no danger of his secret ever being disclosed. No one but Alistair had known.
What a great and wonderful wedding gift he had given her, she thought so unexpectedly that she almost lost her step and almost dipped her ribbon when she was supposed to raise it.
The dancers were treated to enthusiastic applause when the dancing was over.
“My mother,” the Duke of Bridgwater said when they were walking back to the house to prepare for the evening festivities—they had not brought the carriage this time—“will suffer an apoplexy if, or when, she hears about this, Stephanie. She will believe she failed utterly with you and that I have fallen into bad company.”
Oh, my dear, make him happy. He is so very dear to me, my son.
Stephanie could almost hear her mother-in-law say those words, as she had done on her wedding day. One rare glimpse behind the armor of dignity and propriety and grace the dowager duchess had worn perhaps all her life. Stephanie was not so sure her husband was right. But right or not, he sounded quite uncontrite.
“Alistair,” she said, “there is nothing as exhilarating as dancing out of doors, is there? And look, the sky is still quite clear of clouds. We really will be able to dance beneath the stars tonight, will we not?”
She was even, she thought, beginning to be able to contemplate the prospect of tomorrow coming. But she would not let her thoughts dwell on it yet.
IT WAS A day in which great happiness had warred with desperate depression.